Andy Jassy, AWS senior vice president, launched a counterattack against "old guard" tech vendors Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Oracle for offering customers private clouds that promised customers all the benefits of a public cloud in their own data centers. "If you go to a private cloud, you have none of these benefits," Jassy said.

And CEO Jeff Bezos (pictured) said AWS's commitment to low margins will help it win the cloud game in the long run. "High margins cover a lot of sinners," Bezos said. "We've spent 18 years [operating with low margins] so it's deeply ingrained in our culture."